Become More Efficient With Sylpheed E-Mail Client
I could still kick myself for not having tried this e-mail client before. As a Gnome user for years, I used to be happy with Evolution, the e-mail program that comes with this desktop environment. Evolution is considerably faster than any of the contenders (for pay or free) I have tried to date.
Figure 1: Sylpheed's user interface in Windows XP; image taken from the manufacturer's website. All rights reserved.
Sylpheed, however, has been very popular with the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) and Xfce (affectionately tagged “Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment”). Either environment is highly recommended for mobile or older computer systems, as both are configured to use far less memory, and consume energy slower than Gnome or KDE.
Quite typically (for excellent applications suffering from poor marketing), I came to try Sylpheed merely by chance. A friend is permanently at war with e-mail clients, as he constantly fails to keep track of his electronic communication. Slow on deleting already read and processed e-mails, he manages to pile up thousands of files within the system, incapable of developing a comprehensible structure. It goes without saying that he wouldn't find the configuration folder, if it meant his life.
Sylpheed is cross-platform, meaning you may use it under Windows, MacOS or any other Unix-based operating system. Sylpheed is open source and released under GNU GPL (Libraries under GNU LGPL), providing for enhanced flexibility. And last but not least, Sylpheed is very lightweight, which makes it energy efficient and highly responsive. I don't believe I've ever tried an e-mail client that kicks in or runs faster.
The best feature — if you happen to be as poorly organised as aforementioned friend — is its:
Straightforward Filing System
Upon installation you may create a directory (folder) with the meaningful name “Mail” (in any place you prefer) on your hard disk (by default, it will be created in your home directory). There, you will find the default directories of Sylpheed, with all your arriving mails in a directory named “inbox”. “Quite obvious,
” weathered e-mail users might think, but usually these directories are never stored this close to the surface, and, more often than not, the path is rather obscure.
With just a hint of structure, like creating individual directories for partners you are in touch with more frequently, your directory may look like the image below (pay attention to the path).
Figure 2: Sylpheed inbox with individually created directories to store e-mails; path reads: /home/gerry/Mail/inbox/
Here's hoping you will find this short review useful, and also manage a further step on your own road to efficiency. If you know of similar options, be good enough and let's here of them below.